The Hearst Building – Market Street, Financial District, San Francisco, California

The Examiner was founded in 1863 as the Democratic Press, a pro-Confederacy, pro-slavery, pro-Democrat party newspaper opposed to Abraham Lincoln, but after his assassination in 1865 the paper's offices were destroyed by a mob, and starting on June 12, 1865 it was called the Daily Examiner. In 1880, mining engineer and entrepreneur George Hearst acquired the Examiner as partial payment of a poker debt. Seven years later, after being elected to the U.S. Senate, he gave it to his son, William Randolph Hearst, who was then 23 years old.

William Randolph Hearst hired S.S. (Sam) Chamberlain, who had started the first American newspaper in Paris, as managing editor and Arthur McEwen as editor. He changed the Examiner from an evening to a morning paper. Under him, the paper's popularity increased greatly, with the help of such writers as Ambrose Bierce, Mark Twain, and the San Francisco-born Jack London. The paper’s circulation was also boosted by the splashy coverage of scandals such as two entire pages of cables from Vienna about the Mayerling Incident, and by the ample use of foreign correspondents. Hearst used his papers to stir up patriotic enthusiasm for the Spanish–American War and the 1898 annexation of the Philippines.

An earlier home of the San Francisco Examiner had also been located at the corner of Market and Third Streets, but it burned in the 1906 fire. (The competing dailies the Call and the Chronicle were also located at the same intersection which became known as the "Newspaper Angle.") But Hearst was thwarted in his attempt to have the building that housed the Examiner dwarf the buildings of its competitors: the Chronicle and the Call. Following the earthquake and fire of 1906, the city imposed a height limit of 12 stories, which ended Hearst’s plan to construct a 26-story structure with a clock tower. The new building opened in 1909, and in 1937 the facade, entranceway and lobby underwent an extensive remodeling designed by architect Julia Morgan

Making his home in the 12th floor penthouse of the Hearst Building, William Randolph Hearst stayed close to the Examiner’s operations until his death in 1951. The newspaper occupied the building until 1965. Through the middle third of the twentieth century, the Examiner was one of several dailies competing for the city's and the Bay Area's readership; the San Francisco News, the San Francisco Call-Bulletin, and the Chronicle all claimed significant circulation, but ultimately attrition left the Examiner one chief rival – the Chronicle. Strident competition prevailed between the two papers in the 1950s and 1960s. The Examiner boasted, among other writers, such columnists as veteran sportswriter Prescott Sullivan, the popular Herb Caen, and Kenneth Rexroth, one of the best-known men of California letters and a leading San Francisco Renaissance poet, who contributed weekly impressions of the city from 1960 to 1967.

Ultimately circulation battles ended in a merging of resources between the two papers. For 35 years starting in 1965, the San Francisco Chronicle and Examiner operated under a Joint Operating Agreement whereby the Chronicle published a morning paper and the Examiner published in the afternoon. The Examiner published the Sunday paper's news sections and glossy magazine, and the Chronicle contributed the features. Circulation was approximately 100,000 on weekdays and 500,000 on Sundays. By 1995, discussion was already brewing in print media about the possible shuttering of the Examiner due to low circulation and an extremely disadvantageous revenue sharing agreement for the Chronicle.

Early in the 21st century, the Examiner, the longtime "Monarch of the Dailies" and flagship of the Hearst Corporation chain, converted to free distribution and is now independently owned by the San Francisco Media Company.